R.I.P. Thin White Duke. You will be missed.
Archive for Nonsense
Is this blog dead?
Long time no blog. At the start of the year, I started a little post to say “happy new year”, in which I resolved to “write at least six times on my shitty blog this year” … except, fittingly, I never got around to posting the entry.
Weirdly, despite no post action since November, I continue to average 20 or 30 hits a day, mostly people looking for Japanese band Scandal. Given that there’s a fair amount of blog content on the band these days, I can only assume that Google gives me some special ranking boost for writing about them early, back in 2008.
As for me, I haven’t been particularly into music for a while, which is part of why I never write anymore. The aforementioned Scandal put out a new single last month, “Shunkan Sentimental”, but I wasn’t even aware of it ’til this morning, and now that I’m giving it a listen, it’s not really catching my ear. Whether that’s because the band has changed, or my musical interests have changed, or somebody pissed in my oatmeal this morning, I dunno.
Personally? I’ve been listening to a lot of Bowie. Mostly glam-era Bowie — Ziggy Stardust
Oh and by the way, wife’s delivering a baby in the next week or two. Most likely this blog won’t see another post for quite a while ….
We is one year old!
Just noticed that this past Wednesday was the one-year anniversary of this blog! That would admittedly be more impressive if posting hadn’t slowed down to the rate of one a month, but — you know, whatever. Here’s to twelve more useless posts in our second year!
Asobi Seksu @ The Independent, March 13th, 2009
I was really looking forward to seeing Asobi Seksu again, because now that I’ve heard and been disappointed by their new album, I thought I’d hear how the material played out live (when I saw them in October, I didn’t notice any appreciable difference in song quality between the new and old material, but then they only played a handful of new songs).
And basically, the new material held up quite well. The set was split about 50-50 between old and new, and I really didn’t feel that the new stuff was found wanting at all. And they didn’t even play “Glacially”, which is my favorite “rock” song off the album and likely would have torn the place up if they had (they did play “Blind Little Rain”, my absolute fave off the album). Otherwise, most of what I said about their October show seems to hold up pretty well — they sounded tight and did a credible job of recreating the sonics of their albums, and the new(-ish) rhythm section is excellent. And again, the set seemed a bit on the short side.
Alas, due to social obligations, I missed first opener Resplandor entirely — which really, really sucks, as I’ve heard great things about this Peruvian shoegaze band, and the songs on their MySpace page rock — and I only caught the last two songs by second band Bell. (I was also significantly more inebriated than I like to be at concerts, which might explain why my recollections of the show seem somewhat flimsy — “what I said six months ago!” etc.)
Camera Obscura announce their next album
Camera Obscura have announced that their fourth album, My Maudlin Career, will be out on April 20th (21st in the US) on 4AD — which came as a surprise to me because honestly, I didn’t realize that that label still put out new music.
“My Maudlin Life”, the song, is streaming off their MySpace page right now (as well as supposedly being available for download off their web page), and sounds pretty good. Maybe a bit sonically denser than their previous material? But with that same delicate melancholy that we all know and love. I do hope that lead single “French Navy” will be a bit peppier, though.
I actually never really got into their last album, Let’s Get Out of This Country
Navel gazing
Sorry that posting has been pretty light the past week. No real reason, I just can’t seem to finish any of the half dozen things I’m trying to write right now. (At least I have an excuse for not making any progress today — my PC was infected by the Virtumonde virus, and even using Spyware Doctor it took most of the day to clean it off. What a crock of shit.)
Anyway, I’ll try to get some actual content up here in the next day or two.
New Super Furry Animals in March
Wow, suddenly lots of Britpop news floating around. Today the NME reported that the Super Furry Animals next (ninth!) album will be out digitally on March 16th, and a month later on CD (April 13th in the UK, April 21st in the US). It’s currently untitled, but you can see a tenative tracklist (along with other information) at superfurry.com.
I”ll confess that I was a little disappointed in their last album, Hey Venus!
The Moustache of Understanding returns!
Oh yay, Tom Friedman has a new book
VH1’s 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs
A couple weeks ago, Stereogum posted VH1’s list of the 100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs. I bookmarked it but didn’t get around to actually reading the list until today. The list, as expected, is wretched — I mean, fucking Creed?!? — but that’s totally alright, because at #93 we get Autograph’s “Turn Up The Radio”!!! Christ, I didn’t think anyone but me even remembered this song. I shit you not, I was humming it last Saturday:
The only downside is that they picked the wrong Night Ranger song. “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me”? Please. “You Can Still Rock In America”, bitches:
Seriously, I don’t really see the point of a list that defines hard rock so broadly that it could include everything from Green Day to Megadeth to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But I guess VH1 is really only interested in marketing nostalgia anyway, right? And it’s not like Rolling Stone does that much better when they make a list.
New Music
Another rundown on recent music I’ve picked up. This edition is all about shoegaze, old and new. I’ve been listening to a lot of shoegaze lately.
Asobi Seksu, “Me & Mary”
Lush, Gala
Lush, “Monochrome”
Amusement Parks On Fire, s/t
Me & Mary
Gala
Spooky
Amusement Parks On Fire
Ack Phhht! 